"
"And so, because I preferred to ride a mile with him to see something
real that had happened, and tried to be useful instead of looking in
shop-windows in Main Street or promenading before the hotel"--
"And being ornamental," interrupted Cass. But this feeble and
un-Cass-like attempt at playful gallantry met with a sudden check.
Miss Porter drew herself together, and looked out of the window. "Do
you wish me to walk the rest of the way home?"
"No," said Cass, hurriedly, with a crimson face and a sense of
gratuitous rudeness.
"Then stop that kind of talk, right there!"
There was an awkward silence. "I wish I was a man," she said, half
bitterly, half earnestly. Cass Beard was not old and cynical enough to
observe that this devout aspiration is usually uttered by those who
have least reason to deplore their own femininity; and, but for the
rebuff he had just received, would have made the usual emphatic dissent
of our sex, when the wish is uttered by warm red lips and tender
voices--a dissent, it may be remarked, generally withheld, however,
when the masculine spinster dwells on the perfection of woman.
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